Ecuador’s Mountains Sure Look Beautiful From Space

Jamie Condliffe

It may look more like modern art, but you’re actually looking at a the highlands of Ecuador seen from the European Space Agency’s Envisat. The peaks pretty much face the satellite, so the radar signals it sends out are reflected right back, resulting in the strong, bright signals you see.

Near the top of the images you can see the outskirts of Quito — one of the highest capital cities in the world — as a series of white dots. Elsewhere, what looks like white glaciers at the peaks of mountains are in fact artefacts of radio data. [ESA]